The Faith in Humanity Meter

The Faith in Humanity Meter currently reads:

Sad. See "Ignorance Inc."



Thursday, June 30, 2011

Steven Colbert FTW

Steven Colbert wins so much.


"Colbert is literally wading through the crowd with a credit card swiper."

I would just like to point out that one comedian is engaged in an ongoing media crusade against Fox News, while the other is battling the federal government on campaign finance reform. I think Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert's business cards should read "comedian/social activist."

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Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Lol@Propaganda

North Korea is seriously like either bad serious dystopian fiction or good comedic dystopian fiction. Struck by lightning?

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Teaching to the Text Message

This is good stuff.


A wise writing teacher once told me: "shorter isn't better; longer isn't better; better is better." But conciseness is a virtue, and not just in journalism writing.

I think Selsberg has nailed it — there's real potential in teaching kids to write short before writing full. It's a lot easier to let out your writing than it is to rein it in.

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Layabouts by Locale

I'm a sucker for lists like this.


Only two cities from my native Louisiana rank in the "most sedentary" list. New Orleans gets a D+ at #68, whereas dear old Baton Rouge gets a C+ at #36.

I suspect I didn't help BR's statistics. I think standing around in the heat oughtta count for something.

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"Dark of the Moon" Gets Bad Reviews; No One is Surprised.

Kaboom.


I don't intend to see this movie, for all the reasons mentioned. Also, because anybody who can make movies with as cringeworthy dialogue as Bay's gets no room for the pretentious "Dark of the Moon" title. You, troglodyte, don't get to play games with the English language.


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This Week in Duh(mb)

Newsweek's cover is, well, let's just say raising some interesting journalism ethics questions.

Well, not really. It's more just raising some interesting "who in their right mind would be dumb enough to" questions.


Obviously the magazine is trying to cash in on the public's obsession with Princess Diana and with Princess-What's-Her-Name. The fact that Diana still captures the minds of American audiences to the extent that Newsweek might make an ill-advised sortie back into her life amazes me -- in a kind of "palm suddenly applied to face"-type way.

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Friday, June 3, 2011

Unexpected LSU Mentions

Apparently this flag-burning at LSU still hasn't entirely faded from memory.


Read the second-to-last graf of this otherwise unremarkable contribution to the miles-tall stack of 2012 Republican campaign columns.

Well that was unexpected. And I must say, bizarre. I don't know if this being to conspiracy-ish, but it's interesting that this pops up a month later in a paper owned by the same company as FoxNews, the only national outlet to give the event any real coverage.

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UnCollege? Uncool.

As a recent graduate, this obviously drew my eyeballs.


A lot of the author's criticisms of college are fair, and I agree with them. But this author, like so many others, takes a few flaws and ruins something that's beneficial overall.

College taught me a lot. It may not all have been practically useful, but we know through science -- science that exists only because institutions of higher education exist -- that the type of thinking one does in college builds your brain.

But even beyond that perhaps holistic view -- a view know-it-all young entrepreneurs like this guy probably reject -- in practical terms it's overwhelmingly difficult for an overwhelming majority of young people to get a decent job without a degree. The author says we don't have a choice between Zuckerbergdom and low-wage drudgery, and he's technically right.

But only for a very few people.

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The, Uh, Americans Are Coming, Uh, Or Something.

At this point it feels like a cheap shot to even mention it.

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